Johannesburg and New York, June 18, 2010—A full-text, digital archive of journal articles published in Africa is now available at www.ajarchive.org. The African Journal Archive will make African research and cultural heritage published in Africa available free of charge to Africa-based and international researchers.
The Archive, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by South Africa-based Sabinet, is a searchable, web-based collection of journal articles digitized back to the earliest issue, when available. The website currently comprises 150,000 pages of journal archives of academic, scholarly, institutional, museums, and professional research organizations in Africa.
Journals available through the Archive are digitized at no charge to the publisher. Participating publishers also receive a preservation copy of their archived journal volumes.
“For too long the exposure and visibility of research about Africa by Africans has been hampered by an inability to easily access it,” said Rosalind Hattingh, Managing Director, Sabinet Online. “The iterative nature of research demands that researchers have access to seminal, peer-reviewed journals so that they can absorb, acknowledge, challenge and build upon ideas published in journals.”
Over the next three years, Sabinet’s goal is to digitize, index and provide access to more than 200 journals consisting of a total of 90,000 indexed articles in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. The Archive will emphasize collections in the fields of agriculture, botany, zoology, history, law, education, politics, medicine, geology, and interdisciplinary works will be developed. Published material will be acquired from the journal archives of academic, scholarly, institutional, museums and professional research organizations throughout Africa will. And coverage will be retrospective to at least ten years but, back to the earliest issue if possible.
Commenting on the Archive’s importance to a new generation of academics, Rookaya Bawa, Program Officer, Higher Education and Libraries in Africa at Carnegie Corporation said, “By offering free access to important peer-reviewed publications in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, the Archive is helping to nurture a rising generation of scholars who will contribute to the continued development of democracy and civil society on the African continent.” Baya is a veteran librarian leader in her native South Africa.
Carnegie Corporation’s grant to Sabinet builds on the foundation’s decade-long institutional support for universities and libraries. Through this and other investments, Carnegie Corporation is cultivating individual skills in the sciences and humanities, including a regional initiative to help increase the number of well-trained university faculty capable of teaching the next generation of African scientists and engineers.
About Sabinet
Sabinet Gateway is a non-profit organization that promotes and supports Library and Information services in Africa. The organization has significant experience in the creation, development and maintenance of information services. Its service offerings include online access to information from the legal, parliamentary and news sectors that are updated daily. It also has a South African ePublications service that constitutes the largest online collection of South African journals.
About Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic foundation created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to do "real and permanent good in this world."
